1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an input device and a short-range wireless communication converter thereof and more particularly to a converter capable of converting a computer input device with a wired input pattern into that with a wireless input pattern in compliance with a specific communication protocol.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since the advent of computers, computer keyboards are always the most indispensable type of input devices. After windows operating system overwhelm the market, computer mice are equally important as computer keyboards. However, the roles of keyboards and mice serving as critical input devices become somewhat uncertain after the release of touch interfaces. Given the currently popular tablet personal computers (PC) as an example, touch interfaces dominate as the main input device because of their direct operation in comparison with that of keyboards or mice. If all users want is to browse contents on the screen, touch interfaces certainly suffice the need. Whereas, in the event of a large input of texts and numbers, touch interfaces are far more inefficient than keyboards to many users. Even for the lovers of tablet PCs, conventional input tools, such as keyboards, are still the first choice to deal with large input of texts and numbers.
The compatibility support of the tablet PCs in terms of connection with the conventional input devices, such as keyboards, mice and the like, is not as simple and straightforward as expected. The reason behind that is certain tablet PCs do not support common connection protocols. For example, iPad made by Apple does not support the conventional interface ports, such as USB, PS/2 and the like. To connect a keyboard or mouse to iPad, the keyboard or mouse must be compatible with the protocols used in iPad. In other words, a new set of input devices dedicated to such kind of tablet PC should be additionally purchased and it becomes another expenditure to users. From the foregoing, the conventional wired input devices have the compatibility problem when applied to tablet PCs. In fact, wireless input devices also have the same compatibility problem. Infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF) are two common communication techniques employed by regular wireless input devices. However, certain tablet PCs only support short-range wireless communication protocol, rendering the regular wireless input device useless to tablet PCs.